Forget Her
by Vader's Fallen Angel
Summary: Some people are remembered forever. Others are forgotten. A Padme-centric story.


_Forget her._

Padme Amidala Skywalker had been a strong, noble woman. They all agreed on this. But perhaps some things were best kept out of the public eye. So a few facts were hidden. When Amidala's body was returned to Naboo, many speeches were made in her honor. She had cared for her people, worked tirelessly on behalf of them. She had sacrificed her time to insure she did her best. She had been a queen and senator at a time when very difficult decisions had to be made. Amidala had done better than anyone expected, certainly better than Naboo's enemies dared dream about. At the end of the speeches, everyone mourned the wonderful public servant who had left them. No one though thought to mourn a human woman, a living sediment. She was a martyr with a golden halo. She was like someone from a legend or story who gave all she had for the good of their people. It wasn't a surprise, people as good and wonderful as her often gave their lives for causes. If a normal, selfish person like one of them who hadn't thought to serve had made the ultimate sacrifice, somehow it would have affected everyone's hearts deeper. Instead, it was almost all right.

That was the way she should be remembered, they had decided on Polis Massa. Better they never knew of the woman who had hidden a different life. Forget the person who even for a moment sought to be selfish, sought to be happy in a crazy world in a way that was forbidden. She had lived a good deal of her life for the people, why should they know that she had lived and died for another reason as well. Besides, look where that got her. Why should they hang out the sordid love affair in front of the universe's judging eyes? Yes she had that dreaded, scandalous thing – an affair! But they were her friends and so it was best to just forget that really. Better the universe remember her as Lady Amidala than the woman who loved Darth Vader.

_Just forget her._

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_Forget her._

Sola and her sister were close. Or at least, she thought they were. _How could she not tell me she was pregnant! _It continued to haunt her. How much else had Padme hidden? If her sister could deceive their family in regards to her child, concealed a nice/nephew, cousin, and grandchild… All those sisterly talks, all those letters, how much went unsaid, how many lies. In the days after the funeral, no one mentioned how unlike her normal self she was. _The poor girl had just lost her sister_, was the unspoken undercurrent, _the family is in mourning, of course they'll all act a bit different for a while_. But they didn't know that while Sola certainly missed her sister, she had mentally prepared herself for Padme's death for years. It was horrifying when it happened of course, but she knew of that risk. The death was not what shook Sola's world at its core. The deception did that. The fact that fundamental truths like _you can always trust family_ and the rest of the world thought knew Padme Amidala, only the family would get to know Padme Naberrie, and that in the family Sola knew Padme best apparently were no longer true in this new world that suddenly descended. Sola sometimes felt like the children who lived during the invasion of the trade federation must have felt like. To one day live in a calm, peaceful world where there may be bumps and bruises and playground fights, but nothing really _bad_. The next for you and your family treated like animals – rounded up and herded together. To see pain, death, and suffering where before you had only known peace and love. You could never go back after that. So Sola merely tried to comfort her parents and children while calmly accepting all the condolences from everyone in the world who came to pay respect and fought off the reporters and gossips who tried to find out who the so-called virginal former queen "fooled around with". Then at night, when she didn't have anything to distract her, she would painstakingly replay each and every conversation the two sisters shared. Was there anything she could have seen? Did Padme ever give herself away, did she ever slip? Padme's political training had taught her to cover all sorts of things, but surely a big sister should be able to spot what a political opponent wouldn't. Somewhere there was the answer. Some how Sola should have _known_. But she didn't. She felt like screaming as a child would that she didn't like this new world, she had never consented to this and take her back to when everything was good and right and let her forget all this. Of course that never happened. Sola wondered if that world had ever existed at all, or if she had deceived herself more surely than Padme ever could have.

People came to ask her about her sister. Everyone from school children doing papers to reporters, though they became more and more scant, to various historians and recorders who wanted to make sure things were written down properly for future generations. She spoke to them about how self-confident Padme was, how she always stood up for what was right, how intelligent she was. Sola shared a story or two, made sure her eyes went distant at the right times, always insured her voice went soft when speaking of Padme's death. No one noticed that Sola never mentioned anything about Padme always putting anyone and everyone else before her family. No one noticed that she carefully deflected any and all comments and questions that touched on her sister's loyalty. She told her husband that it might be unsafe bearing in mind the world they lived in, particularly considering Pooja was in the senate now and talking about Padme holding any sort of loyalty to anyone the empire may not like was dangerous. And, her mind whispered, you can't talk about what she didn't have. Would she had died because she knew it would keep you safe and hidden from the eyes of those who wished you harm? Would she have spoken of you kindly with her last breath? No, you were not even worthy to know she had another family. She was not loyal to her family at all. So Sola forgot the sister who had never betrayed her and held her confidence through the years of childhood and womanhood alike. She never knew of the woman so loyal to her children as to bend all of her will towards ending her own life to keep them a secret. She never heard Padme's last words. When one day a record keeper for the Hall of Queens was leaving, his last words to Sola were an apology for bringing up painful memories, and murmuring about the importance of getting the testimony of someone who _really knew her_, Padme. He did not hear her whispered response, _then you should not have come to me_.

_Just forget her._

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_Forget her._

Darth Sideous wanted his apprentice to forget Amidala. Yet her hold on him continued after her death. Vader, with no conscious of his own had adapted her morals into his life as best he could. He would still refuse to do certain things he knew that his wife had condemned or hated. This, Sideous decided, had to stop now. He had never bothered to examine love beyond how he could use it. So here he was at a loss. His first thought was to try to make Vader hate her. This was discarded after a few tentative comments. Insulting Amidala, blasted girl, made his apprentice more likely to hate him and while he wanted Vader to eventually kill him, Sideous wanted it to be for the desire for power, not for love of that chit. Reminding Vader that she had been a traitor was useless. It only increased Vader's self-hatred and self-loathing as Vader had apparently learned that Kenobi had tricked her. The apprentice's feelings gave him more power as a Sith, as evidenced when he faced Darth Maul, but were _not_ very helpful to stopping his near worship of his wife. But in his frustrated meditations he came upon the answer.

Sideous influenced Vader's dreams liked he had before. It was a delicate thing to do, though he had done it on two different occasions Vader was a Sith now. Sideous created dreams in which Amidala hated him and all he had done. Where she turned her back on him or condemned him. He pulled out the memories of her rejections of Vader when he courted her, paraded images of her as Queen Amidala or Senator Amidala. Until Vader's memories showed her as an angel, far beyond his reach, whom he should have never tried to call his companion much less his wife. He was too tainted to ever be near her. It was better he damn himself completely than risk coming across her in heaven and learning of her hatred. Not that he would ever get there anyways. He was the damned, and had no reason to try to be anything else. And so he forgot the Padme who was human herself. Who would put the universe before everything, sometimes to the point where she accidentally alienated herself from everyone around her. The woman who could never remember to turn the datapad off and never drank caf in the morning even though he was convinced that she survived on it and sheer will power come night. Padme who had held him in the garage without a word of condemnation, who had welcomed him to her bed after his time at war where he had dealt death indiscriminately, who soothed him after his duel with Asajj Ventress. He forgot the woman who had let him cry, let him rage, and let him be a flawed, imperfect human.

_Just forget her._

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_Forget her._

When he had taken Leia home, Bail had asked Mortee, one of Padme's handmaidens, to join them. He had learned, when asking questions of the handmaidens, that this one had an incurable, hereditary disease of some type. It was unpronounceable, but uncatchable. So he brought her back to pose as Leia's mother. This, he hoped, would put off any questions about his new daughter's resemblance to Padme and of how he had come across the child. After all, he and Amidala had been allies at the very least and Breha and he had wanted to adopt for a while. If he learned that the attendant's of one of his allies was in disgrace and was looking for someone to take a little girl, well, all someone who have to do was put two and two together to figure out how that must have worked.

That part of his plan succeeded. The second part did as well, almost. Mortee died when Leia was five, old enough to vaguely remember her. No one ever questioned that Mortee was Leia's birth mother and Leia, believing she knew her mother, did not go hunting for references. Unfortunately, she asked questions about her barely-remembered "mother". Leia could sense out-right lies so if Bail told any, she was sure to go digging around. So he gave her vague answers, beautiful, kind, adjectives that could apply to both women. To distract her he would tell stories of people he knew or had once known. He told her a great deal about Amidala, the calm, level-headed, senator who had done all she could for the universe. But he never mentioned Padme, the woman who had died to give her children life. To die of a broken heart like some bad romance novel, the person he had known was stronger than that. The person he thought he knew would not have risked everything for a forbidden fling, she was much more sensible than that. So he spoke of strength, intelligence and courage, but never of love, warmth, and sacrifice.

_Just forget her._

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_Forget her._

When Luke first asked about his mother, Beru didn't know what to say. She and Padme had only a handful of conversations. She told him this and he seemed disappointed. But she remembered Shmi's stories of the meeting between the two of them. Beru felt she shouldn't bring up slavery, and couldn't bring up pod racing. So instead she spoke of a young girl and a young boy who were in a junk shop at the same time. She spoke of two children who had innocently met one day, of how there was a connection between them instantly. ("Like _that_" she had told Luke, snapping her fingers. He had giggled, "like _that_" he had repeated trying to snap his own fingers. They spent the rest of the afternoon practicing snapping and luckily that put him off asking about his parents for a while. But he came back to them, he always did.) She told Luke how excited Anakin had been to show Padme everything. She repeated Shmi's stories, modifying here and there. Dignified, but warm. Sweet and somewhat shy.

Beru didn't tell Luke about the woman who, in the week before Shmi's funeral, waited until the men were asleep and had awoken her. How the two women had flown on the speeder to where the Tuskun camp was, Pamde having learned of its location during Anakin's ramblings. How Beru, frightened, stood watch, gun in hand, as Padme calmly prepared a proper funeral pyre and sent up prayers for the souls of the slain. How they returned and never spoke of it to anyone. To tell Luke that would be to bring up Shmi's death and Anakin's reaction. Luke didn't need to know what his father had done, she told herself. But that excuse didn't cover why she didn't tell Luke other stories of his mother's bravery. Padme had told them what had happened after Anakin had left Tatooine. She had meant to praise Anakin to his stepfamily, but Beru learned about the young queen's courage as well. But the last thing she wanted to do was encourage further acts of recklessness from her charge anyway. So she didn't tell him.

_Just forget her._

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Luke and Leia searched for their mother, pouring through records, looking for that one clue that would point her out, would lead them to her. But they found nothing.

Han, who was "raised" on the streets of Cordilia, pointed out that there might not be anything to find. After all, Jedi were forbidden attachments, but not required celebrity. It was entirely possible that she had been one of many whores living on Coruscant who, when that fossil Kenobi came looking for Vader's children to insure they didn't follow their father, was all too happy to hand them over and forget about the whole thing. It would explain why Vader was so surprised to learn he was a father, he might have never seen the woman again and in such a position she could not hunt him down even if she had been certain he was the father. He did not think of her as very different from most of the others on the streets.

Leia, who had grown up among politicians, thought that she was probably the handmaiden or assistant of some senator who had an affair with their father. Her pregnancy would have put her in disgrace and so she had left Coruscant to hide for a while. Then, when the Empire had risen, realized the danger her children, children of a Jedi, would be in, and contacted one or more of the senators she had known and asked for assistance. Some how, maybe through Bail, General Kenobi had found out and hidden them. Then the girl had taken up her old duties of an assistant or handmaiden until her death. She thought their mother must have been levelheaded and sensible, but also frightened and far too aware of what the world was like.

Luke, who had spent his childhood dreaming of his parents, had a more romantic view. In his mind the two were childhood friends who, under the stress of the war, had come to depend on each other for strength in such times. At some point the relationship had turned physical. Not wanting to burden their father in such a time, she had left to have the children quietly, and died in childbirth. Not concealing them from him purposely, but because once someone's dead they can't bring messages from beyond the grave unless they happen to be a Jedi like Ben. He imagined her as dignified and compassionate, but also a bit overwhelmed and trying to do what she could under the worst of circumstances.

They came across a few mentions of a Senator Amidala, and Leia went on at length how she had admired the woman, had made Amidala her hero. But they passed her by as one of their father's assignments.

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Amidala was a Queen and a Senator. Strong, noble, intelligent, compassionate… the history books remembered her fondly, if briefly. After all, she had very little affect on the fate of the universe in the end, even if she had done her best when she could. There were far more important names to record, more important people to write about, people whose actions influenced times beyond their own fleeting life. She had certainly tried, but in the end the universe would have probably gone the same way had she not been there. When scholars balanced out significance, they concluded that her only outstanding act was the vote of no confidence that any one else would have done in her position any way.

She was made note of, but buried under people more important to the universe.

Padme Skywalker was a wife and mother. She was a human who laugh and cried, loved and hated, followed her head and heart in turn, gave the universe its greatest heroes and greatest villains.

She was forgotten


End file.
